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Emotionally Handicapped

I woke up this morning to notification beeps on my smart phone realizing for the first time that I was not a work on my birthday. When one is retired, one has the freedom not to have to stand and teach in a 90 degree room on a late June day. People were posting to my timeline on Facebook giving me birthday wishes. By the early afternoon, about 40 people wished me Happy Birthday. As I scrolled down the names of many of my friends, I soon realized that each person was important to me at different times of my life. Besides the usual family members, there were childhood friends and many teaching colleagues. Some were from the time I first became a teacher while others became friends with me later in my career when I was an Educational Evaluator on a child study team doing diagnostic testing of disabled students.

Then it hit me. I began to remember another birthday—one that took place in 1978. When I woke up that June morning, I was headed for an interview for my first real teaching job. Instead of Facebook notifications and email messages, there were birthday cards. Yes, I remember the time when people walked to the drug store, bought a card with thought, wrote a short message, signed their name, and mail it in time so that it would get to you either on or before your birthday. When I look at those old cards, these signatures still keep alive the memory of my parents, aunt, uncles, and friends no longer with us.

On that day I reached my 24th birthday. I was younger in age than both of my sons today. To tell the truth, I was still pretty naïve and in some ways not completely grown up at that time. I was living at home with my parents and my room still had somewhat of an adolescent quality to it. My bookcase was lined with many college books and science fiction novels. On another shelf were some of my board games, such as Scrabble and Monopoly. I still had a box on a table filled with old baseball cards (foolishly thrown out a week before I would get married three years later). There was my old twelve inch black and white TV with its rabbit ear antennas and seven live stations. There was my FM stereo radio, cassette, and turntable which endlessly played my little collection of vinyl records from the likes of Simon and Garfunkel, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Associations, etc.

I wore a brown suit that day with a polyester shirt and thick tie for that first real interview. A few weeks before, I finished my Master’s Degree in special education at Queens College. Interestingly, I did my teaching internship in a school that is presently up the block from where I live right now. I student taught in a class made up of emotionally handicapped neurologically impaired students. The class consisted of ten boys that were in third/fourth grade. To tell the truth, my supervising teacher probably was a little weak in terms of managing the students, but her heart was in the right place. In this white, middle class school (now primarily Asian), the special education class I was assigned did stand out. Not only were many of the students of color, but they were often loud while the rest of the school was quiet as a church. I recall one teacher who constantly complained about the noise our NIEH class made. Little did I realize that a quarter century later she would be my superintendent! The special education class I interned in did not really interact with the school because we entered the building through a side entrance and ate lunch at a separate time. These disabled students were not even allowed to participate in assembly or gym. This was a very different world.

I took the bus to Forest Hills that day to take the train to an ungentrified downtown Brooklyn. Besides a few old office buildings on Court and Livingston Streets, there were a few run-down stores and dilapidated brownstones on the side streets. This was my first visit to 110 Livingston Street. This building, today a luxury condominium, was thought to house what would be considered the paradigm of bureaucratic incompetence. I passed the Great Hall of the Board of Education to the elevators and made my way to the floor (I do not recall which one) that housed all the offices in charge of special education. At that time, special education was divided into different bureaus. There was the Bureau of the Physical Handicapped, the Bureau of Health Conservation, the Bureau of the Emotionally Handicapped and the Bureau of Students with Retarded Mental Development. I had to make my way to the Bureau of the Physically Handicapped. I recall having my heart in my mouth as I opened the door.

In the office sat two older men in shirt sleeves who were probably younger than I am today. One was standing and I told him who sent me to them. To my surprise, after they sat me down, they talked to me very informally which calmed my nerves. Besides the usual interview-type questions, what I most recall was pieces of the conversation that reminded me what a different world 1978 was from today. They both told me that I was being offered a very difficult job a minority school in South Jamaica. They told me the students would be difficult, I would not have a lot of resources and that I will probably make many mistakes. However, they told me not to worry because all young teachers make mistakes and often have difficulty reaching these children. They just hoped I had a little bit of a tough hide, but, at the same time, really felt something for these kids. One said that all teachers make goofs at the beginning, but really good teachers learn from their goofs. And great teachers learn from others. No one asked for a demonstration lesson or a portfolio of my lessons and student work. They gave me a job based on their own impressions of me and not data. They were looking for a good person who did have some skills; but I sense they were looking primarily for someone with a good heart. By the way, both these supervisors were educators who understood what I really had to face in what is today called a high need school.

Today, I probably would not have even gotten the job. After all, I would have to prove success even before I even started in the classroom. Expecting me to do the best I could is not good enough for the present reform crowd. I would have to say that I expect these high need students to achieve above grade level and reach proficiency on every common core assessment. I would have to bring a 200 page portfolio showing sample lessons and data showing student growth from my internship. My Master’s Degree would not impress them unless I passed all four state teaching examinations. On the other hand, if I came through Teach for America and attended an Ivy, I would not have to prove anything. Instead of encouragement, I would probably be told that if I failed with these students, my career would be short lived. Unlike today, in 1978, they still wanted teachers who would turn their love of children into a career and not into cogs measured by data points. That was the world I came into as a teacher and will always believe in. Children and teachers are people and not human capital. I retired because I measure the human and not the economic value of children and teachers.

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George Lakoff has retired as Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is now Director of the Center for the Neural Mind & Society (cnms.berkeley.edu).

"That all citizens will be given an equal start through a sound education is one of the most basic, promised rights of our democracy. Our chronic refusal as a nation to guarantee that right for all children.... is rooted in a kind of moral blindness, or at least a failure of moral imagination.... It is a failure which threatens our future as a nation of citizens called to a common purpose... tied to one another by a common bond." —Senator Paul Wellstone --- March 31, 2000